Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Online Database of Egyptian Early Dynastic inscriptions

The current database
assembles all available Early Dynastic inscriptions, covering the first
attestations of writing discovered in tomb U-j (Naqada IIIA1, ca. 3250 BC) until the earliest
known continuous written text in the reign of Netjerikhet–more commonly known
as Djoser (ca. 2700 BC).[1]The database originated as a computerized Access document containing the
collection of sources on which the author’s publication “A Palaeographic
Study of Early Writing in Egypt” was based.[2]
The latter was kindly reformed into a web compatible application by Prof.
Erhart Graefe, former head of the Department of Egyptology and Coptology at the Westfalische-Wilhelms Universität, Münster, Germany, which hosts the database. I wish
to express my sincere gratitude to him. Additional information on bibliography, reading and interpretation of
signs and whereabouts of the inscriptions have kindly been provided
by: Eva-Maria Engel, Annelies Bleeker, Catherine Jones, Kathryn
Piquette, the students of the third MA semester 2012-2013 from the FU
Berlin (Stephanie Bruck, Dominik Ceballos Contreras, Viktoria Fink,
Stephan Hartlepp, Ingo Küchler, Soukaina Najjarane, Niklas Schneeweiß,
Melanie Schreiber, Dina Serova, Elisabeth Wegner).[3]

The database contains more then 4500 inscriptions and
is constantly updated. Each
inscription was assigned a source number. The source list, published by J. Kahl in Das System der ägyptischen Hieroglyphenschrift in der 0.-3. Dynastie,171-417, was the point of
departure.[4]
The sequence of the Kahl list is chronological but this could not be followed
when new sources were added as they were found. About 700 sources could be
added to his collection starting
with number 4000. Multiple impressions from the same cylinder seal were
incorporated as one source since they are copies of one inscription.

The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available.

The ancient world is conceived here as it is at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, my academic home at the time AWOL was launched. That is, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Pacific, from the beginnings of human habitation to the late antique / early Islamic period.

AWOL is the successor to Abzu, a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in 1994. Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.